Chamber and committees

I agree, and I am often in places—on ferries, for example—where a specific announcement is made about that. Fiona, can I bring you in?

Oh, you are referring to proxy purchasing. My apologies—I misunderstood your question. No, there is absolutely no change in that regard. Proxy purchasing would still fall under this bill.

Yes—I can picture it. My apologies. We advertised it at the Scottish women’s cup final on the advertising hoardings at Tynecastle last year and it shifted people’s awareness. That campaign was directed specifically at parents through posters and short podcasts. It was a very important campaign to ensure that parents recognise the concerns about children vaping.

You are absolutely right. The level of smoking in Scotland has stubbornly stayed at around 15 per cent. We have been working hard with Public Health Scotland to get in-depth data so that we can understand where we need to focus our work. We also work closely with community pharmacies and provide them with support. The posters can often be seen in those pharmacies.

We also work closely with health boards. Last year, we baselined funding within NHS budgets to ensure that they could spend money specifically on smoking cessation products and support, as their local needs required. It is very much a combined area of work to ensure that we support people who are addicted to nicotine products, whether they be cigarettes or vapes. In fact, I have had a few letters about the issue from concerned parents, and we can always point them in the direction of the smoking and vaping cessation support that we have in Scotland.

The evidence base is being built up now, but, yes, most definitely, young people who are smoking or vaping can access the support facilities. There is also a new study that has been funded, which Professor Bauld will tell you about.

I absolutely agree that we need to do a bit more about those novel products—if I may call them that—and that is exactly what the bill aims to do: it aims to bring products such as heated tobacco and snus under the legislation to ensure that we have better powers to reduce their availability to young and older people. As I understand it, a lot of evidence gathering is still going on in the area, because we need to ensure that we have robust evidence in that respect.

I recognise the work that Emma Harper has been doing on food safety. As I have outlined, I have regular meetings with the chief executive of Food Standards Scotland. It was set up to have the mechanisms to ensure that it remains the competent authority for food and feed in Scotland and that it has official controls. It is important to recognise that it does internal audits on its science and that external audits are carried out by independent scientists.

Emma Harper made a point about the ability to horizon scan and see what is new and what is coming on to the market, which will be a key aspect of the changes that are being proposed. Currently, just under a quarter of Food Standards Scotland’s time is spent on ensuring that we match the 10-year standards, whereas the proposed changes will mean that important resources can be freed up to ensure that we can look to the future to see what potential new additives could be coming on to the market in Scotland.

Georgie, do you want to add anything to that?

Every year, in common with every other body that is funded by the Scottish Government, FSS sets a budget to allocate its resources to the various areas that it has to cover. Those areas include the food standards regulation regimes that we are here to talk about today, along with providing the public and Government with advice on the food that people consume and improving the extent to which the Scottish public, and people more widely, have diets that are conducive to good health. There is a budget process every year, along with an audit process that looks at Food Standards Scotland’s budget and its outcomes. It is a key organisation within Scotland.

Thank you. I am pleased to join the committee to consider the notification on the UK Food and Feed (Regulated Products) (Amendment, Revocation, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025.

The proposed reforms that would be delivered by the UK statutory instrument have been co-developed under the provisional food and feed safety and hygiene common framework. The instrument proposes two Great-Britain-wide reforms for regulated products. The first is to remove requirements for periodic renewal of authorisations for three regulated products regimes. The second is to allow authorisations to come into effect following a ministerial decision, which would be published in an official register rather than being prescribed by statutory instrument.

We need to modernise the regulated products service. Food Standards Scotland and the Food Standards Agency assess applications for those products and provide advice to the respective ministers who decide whether the products can be sold. The instrument would implement a more proportionate approach to reviewing products that are already authorised for sale by focusing on evidence-based safety concerns as they arise, instead of review being driven by fixed renewal points every 10 years. The majority of products have years of safe use. Removing set renewal periods will allow a more targeted approach to regulation, in which FSS and the FSA use powers to review authorisations as new evidence emerges around the safety of a product that is on the market.

The second of the reforms will allow authorisations to come into force following a ministerial decision. Authorisations would be published in an official public register, rather than being prescribed in a statutory instrument. Such authorisations will reduce the timescales for products to reach the market and will not impose the use of valuable parliamentary time. That approach would align with authorisation processes that are used by other regulators in the UK for similarly regulated products.

FSS and the FSA provide technical and scientific scrutiny through skilled and experienced staff and expert independent scientific advisory committees. They assess individual applications and provide a safety assessment from which risk management advice and recommendations are formed for subsequent ministerial decision. The proposed process squarely aligns with internationally recognised principles and maintains transparency.

Overall, this is an opportunity to deliver reforms that prioritise efficiency in the authorisation of regulated products and focuses resources on new products that require more input when access to the market is being sought for them.

FSS and the FSA have earned the trust of the public through their rigorous approach to risk analysis. In the proposed reforms, food safety will continue to be the priority. The reforms will also result in improvements in efficiency and the maintenance of robust safety standards.

I ask the committee to agree that the Scottish ministers should consent to the reforms in the GB SI. I am happy to take any questions.

I do not believe so. There is strength in the fact that Food Standards Scotland, which was set up under the Food (Scotland) Act 2015 to protect the public from risks to health that may arise in connection with food consumption, is independent of Government and that it has the option and opportunities to take advice from independent scientists, as it regularly does. I believe that that is the best way to protect consumers’ interests regarding food and feed safety.